Allan Tasman

Allan Tasman is Professor and Emeritus Chairman (Chairman 1991-2015) of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Louisville and Schwab Endowed Chair in Social and Community Psychiatry, He completed psychiatric residency at the University of Cincinnati following medical school at the University of Kentucky. He also is a graduate of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute and was a faculty member in the Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute for many years. He is internationally known for his advocacy for innovation in psychiatric education and clinical services and for an evidence based integrative bio-psycho-social model of treatment within a comprehensive and collaborative system of care. His reputation in psychiatric education began when he was a faculty member at the University of Connecticut Medical School during the late 1970’s, and he continues to be a highly regarded teacher and educational leader both nationally and internationally. Through his national and international work over the last three decades, he also has been involved in a broad range of strategic planning and mental health policy issues, particularly in the areas of managed care, mental health parity, mental health workforce, and the impact of the Affordable Care Act on access to mental health services. Known as a collaborative and transformational leader, he led the psychiatry department in Louisville to a sustained period of growth and expansion of its academic and clinical programs including growing its NIH rankings for research to the highest level in the department’s history, and the expansion or development of a number of new subspecialty education/training programs. In addition, he conceptualized and led the development of and the approval process for two multidisciplinary university designated centers of excellence, the University of Louisville Depression Center, and the University of Louisville Autism Center.

In Louisville, recognizing his knowledge and skills in health policy, strategic planning, and program implementation, he has been asked to serve in a number of leadership positions, including service as President of the medical school practice plan where he successfully oversaw the first complete revision of the plan in over 20 years. He also is the founding President of KMRRRG, the university owned malpractice insurance corporation, in which role he spearheaded implementation of extensive risk management training programs, and Treasurer of Passport Health Plan. In the early 1990’s, to address health and mental health disparities in the Medicaid population, he conceptualized and helped catalyze implementation of Passport, an innovative non-profit managed care system which is now the Louisville region’s largest service provider for the Medicaid population, and the second largest in the entire state, with nearly a 2-billion-dollar annual budget and consistently in the US News and World Report and NCQA top rank. A key factor in Passport’s success has been the initial and ongoing focus on an incentive system for clinicians and senior administrators which prioritized quality of health outcomes. In addition, he has played a leadership role in a variety of initiatives which increased interinstitutional and interdepartmental collaboration, including consolidation of the medical school individual department practices into a single entity and developing a nationally recognized regional psychiatric crisis intervention program. (Honorable Mention in the APA community services recognition award).

He also conceptualized, developed, and served as founding director of the School of Medicine Distinction in Research Program, a school wide academic enrichment program to encourage choice of academic research careers by medical students. This program’s success has led to development of new tracks in global health, health economics, leadership, and education.

His research has been funded with a variety of federal and other grants over 35 years. Using electroencephalography brain mapping techniques, his work has focused on the neurophysiology of cognitive processes, especially related to alcohol and drug addiction, mood disorders, and autism. His laboratory at the University of Connecticut, which performed all the cognitive neurophysiology research for the department of psychiatry’s NIAAA funded alcohol research center, was one of the first to describe functional neural abnormalities in offspring of alcoholics which was present before the development of alcohol abuse in those offspring. His recent research focuses on investigation of innovative neuromodulation treatments of autism and substance abuse.

He was president of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training (AADPRT) and of the Association for Academic Psychiatry (AAP). During his presidencies in AADPRT and AAP he oversaw the transformation of the Journal of Psychiatric Education into Academic Psychiatry, now the most highly regarded publication regarding psychiatric education and academic psychiatry in the world. He also served as president of the American Association of Chairs of Departments of Psychiatry (AACDP) for two terms. He is the only individual to have served as president of each of these three major US academic psychiatry organizations and the only person to have served two terms as president of the chairs association.

In the American Psychiatric Association, he served as Scientific Program Chairman for four years, Vice President, President–Elect, and President. During his tenure as chair of the program committee he introduced a number of innovations in the format of the annual meeting. As APA president elect, he conceptualized and successfully gained Board of Trustees approval to establish the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE) now nearing its third decade of success. As APA president he implemented the initial planning process for DSM 5 and oversaw a complete corporate reorganization of the APA which resulted in substantially improved efficiency and productivity as well as stabilization of its financial base.

In 2005, he was elected to a six-year term as Secretary for Education of the World Psychiatric Association, where he was responsible for global educational policy. In that role he spearheaded the development and implementation of global training and educational guidelines for medical student and resident education in psychiatry. In 2014 he began the first of two three-year terms as Chair of the WPA Section on Education, which develops and implements educational programs for the WPA. In that role he is developing programs for primary care clinician psychiatric education and psychiatric education in countries with low mental health clinician resources. He also was President of the Pacific Rim College of Psychiatrists from 2006-08, an international organization of academic leaders representing all countries of the pacific rim, in which role he established and now serves as Senior Editor of the journal Asia Pacific Psychiatry, the first transnational English language psychiatric journal for the entire pacific rim region. The journal was approved for indexing in the second year of publication. The journal also was selected to be their official journal by the 20,000 member Asian Federation of Psychiatric Associations in 2018.

He has authored or edited 36 psychiatric textbooks and monographs. His more than 240 peer-reviewed publications, chapters, and abstracts, 70 editorials in psychiatric publications, and over 380 national and international presentations have focused on psychiatric education, psychotherapy training, his cognitive neuroscience research, clinical practice, health policy, and global mental health. He is a founding editor or co-editor of two psychiatric journals, the Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research, and Asia-Pacific Psychiatry. He also currently serves is Editor in Chief (Americas) of Mental Health in Family Medicine. He is founding senior editor of all four editions of a comprehensive textbook, Psychiatry, called “the best current textbook of psychiatry” by the New England Journal of Medicine and the “gold standard” by the American Journal of Psychiatry. The 4th edition was published in 2015. His book The Doctor-Patient Relationship in Pharmacotherapy: Improving Treatment Effectiveness, published in 2000, focuses on the critical importance of the therapeutic alliance and the use of psychotherapeutic skills in patient care, no matter what the primary mode of treatment nor the clinical setting. He also is Editor in Chief of Psychiatric Times, the publication most widely read by psychiatrists in the United States.

He is the recipient of a number of awards for leadership, educational excellence, and distinguished professional service. These include the Roeske Award for Medical Student Education (1991) and the Bland Award for Residency Education (2005), both from the American Psychiatric Association, and the Educator of the Year Award (2000) from the Association for Academic Psychiatry. He was elected to membership in Alpha Omega Alpha, the medical honor society, in 2002 in recognition of academic career achievement. In 2003, he received the University of Louisville President’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession. In 2005 he received a special presidential commendation from the American Psychiatric Association for distinguished service to psychiatry. He was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists of the United Kingdom in 2007, a rare honor for a psychiatrist trained outside the United Kingdom, and an Honorary Fellow of the World Psychiatric Association in 2011. He was the recipient of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine Distinguished Alumnus Award for 2008, the only psychiatrist to have received this honor in the school’s history. In 2012, he received the Franklin and Marshall College Alumni Citation, the college’s distinguished alumnus award. He received the 2013 University of Louisville President’s Distinguished Faculty Award for National/International Service which recognized his international educational activities. He is one of only a few faculty members in the entire university to have received two such university wide recognitions. The American College of Psychiatrists awarded him the 2016 Distinguished Service to Psychiatry Award, the organization’s highest honor.

His community activities in Louisville include service on the board of directors of the Area Wide Alcohol/Drugs Rehabilitation and Education Coalition, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Jewish Community Center, the Metro Board of Health Affordable Care Act Implementation Steering Committee, the Mayor’s Dual Diagnosis Cross Functional Task Force, and chairman for the Mayor’s Drug Abuse Treatment Summit.